Donna Noble has come to realise that she made a mistake when she
declined the Doctor's offer to travel with him in the TARDIS. Now she
finds herself seeking out every hint of the unusual and the unexplained,
in the hope of running into him again. Her plan succeeds when both she
and the Doctor begin to investigate a company run by the sinister Miss
Foster which offers a suspiciously effective diet pill. They discover
that Miss Foster is actually using the human race as the breeding ground
for the alien Adipose -- and millions of lives are at risk.

Production

Ever since Doctor Who returned in 2005, it had become tradition
that each season's debut adventure would be recorded during the initial
production block for that year's episodes. For the 2008 season, however,
this pattern changed: the premiere would be made partway through the
filming schedule in order to more evenly distribute the scripts written
by executive producer Russell T Davies. As a result, although Davies
expected to introduce the Doctor's new companion in this first episode,
the character would actually need to be ready for inclusion in several
other scripts which would be made before or alongside Davies'.

The result of this was that Davies had only barely begun work on the
actual script for the season premiere when plans for the new companion
underwent a major change. Davies had intended to pair the Doctor with a
thirty-something companion named Penny Carter, who was based in part on
Donna Noble, the character portrayed by Catherine Tate in the 2006
Christmas special The Runaway Bride.
During March 2007, however, it was learned that Tate herself was
interested in returning to Doctor Who, and a deal was rapidly put
together to have Tate feature as Donna in all thirteen episodes of the
2008 season.

Russell T Davies was interested in featuring a
computer-generated monster numbering in the hundreds

To this point, Davies' ideas for the first episode were fairly vague. He
had considered setting the story in suburban London, with a spaceship
sealing off a section of the city under an enormous dome while an alien
was hunted through the streets. By the end of March, Davies had decided
to drop the spaceship element; instead, a dilapidated old house would
hide a portal to another planet which had been overrun with vicious,
dog-like Vorlax. The last survivors of this world had opened the portal
to Earth in order to rid their world of the invaders. The hordes of
Vorlax pouring through the portal would tie in with Davies' interest in
featuring a computer-generated monster which could be depicted as
numbering in the hundreds or thousands, as had been successfully
achieved in recent movies such as 2002's The Lord Of The Rings: The
Two Towers.

In early April, however, Davies became disillusioned with the Vorlax
plot. Instead, he realised that since Donna was not a new character who
had to be introduced from scratch, he could write a very different sort
of season premiere. This inspired the idea of the Doctor and Donna
separately investigating strange goings-on in an office block,
constantly missing each other by a hair's breadth and thus not meeting
until halfway through the adventure. Initially, Davies considered basing
the adventure around cosmetic surgery, with people receiving
“Botox” injections containing alien spores that burst and
transform the victim into a monster. By July, his focus had shifted to
the weight-loss industry, with pills turning human fat into sentient
creatures. In mid-July, Davies began coordinating with visual effects
firm The Mill to achieve sequences involving hundreds of these Adipose
onscreen at the same time.

By the start of August, however, it was clear that a script for the
season premiere would not be ready in time for the planned production
schedule. Originally, the debut episode was to be made alongside The Fires Of Pompeii as the season's third
recording block, directed by Colin Teague. The latter episode already
bore a number of challenges -- not least several days' filming in Italy
-- and so it was decided to cleave the block in two; The Fires Of Pompeii would solely comprise
Block Three, while the premiere would now form Block Four. This meant
that Teague would be replaced on Davies' episode by James Strong, who
had recently completed the 2007 Christmas special, Voyage Of The Damned.

The set piece involving a window washer's cradle had been
planned for the previous year's Smith And
Jones

With the pressure to complete his script now somewhat alleviated, Davies
was finally able to finish his first draft for what would eventually
become known as Partners In Crime on September 6th. At this
point, the villain of the piece was called Miss Rattigan; this was
changed to Miss Foster because Davies felt that it better encapsulated
her motherly role. Davies also decided to acknowledge his original plans
for the season's companion by introducing an investigative journalist
named Penny Carter. One of the episode's key set pieces, involving a
window washer's cradle, had originally been planned for the previous
year's opening episode, Smith And Jones.
It had been cut from that script due to concerns about the story's
length, but Davies felt that it was too good an idea to dismiss
entirely.

Eager to provide Donna with a touchstone to modern-day Earth, Davies
decided to bring back her parents, Geoff and Sylvia; Howard Attfield and
Jacqueline King agreed to reprise their roles from The Runaway Bride. Attfield had enjoyed
many small roles over the years, including episodes of The Darling
Buds Of May and Lexx and the movie Ever After. King's
credits included appearances in Doctors, The Bill and
55 Degrees North. She had also been cast in the 2003 Doctor
Who Unbound audio play Deadline from Big Finish
Productions.

Meanwhile, Davies had also been considering a more surprising return
in Partners In Crime. From an early stage, he had planned that
the 2008 season would culminate in the return of many of the characters
that had been featured prominently since Doctor Who returned in
2005. It had now been decided that this would be Davies' final season
finale: the programme would be rested during 2009, appearing only in the
form of several specials, and the last of these would bring Davies' time
on Doctor Who to an end. As such, Davies wanted to make the
conclusion of the 2008 season as big as it could possibly be. Key to
this was the return of Rose Tyler, played by Billie Piper; the former
companion had last appeared in 2006's finale, Doomsday, in which she was trapped in a
parallel universe, seemingly forever.

Billie Piper confirmed her interest in up to four new
Doctor Who episodes

Now, however, Davies had devised a way to bring Rose back, and in March,
Piper confirmed that she was interested in appearing in as many as four
new Doctor Who episodes. Davies began contemplating the
possibility of including a scene at the end of the season premiere which
would feature a brief glimpse of Rose -- a scene which would either be
edited out of any preview tapes or replaced with an analogous scene in
which Rose did not appear, in order to preserve the surprise until the
episode's transmission. Davies was still mulling over this idea in
August, when it was learned that Piper would be on honeymoon during
January -- overlapping with the intended filming dates of the two-part
season finale. Davies feared that he would have to rework the season's
storylines to omit Rose, but executive producer Julie Gardner was able
to rejig the schedules of all those involved in order to accommodate
Piper's availability. At this point, it was also agreed that a surprise
sequence featuring Rose at the end of Partners In Crime should be
pursued. However, this would have to be structured in such a way that it
could be filmed during the making of Turn
Left, the first episode in which Piper would make a
fully-fledged return to the series.

Filming for Partners In Crime began on October 4th at Waterloo
Gardens in Cardiff, covering some of the scenes outside and within
Stacey's home. The rest of this material was completed the next day, at
Glan Rhymni in Tremorfa; the same building also served as Roger's house.
By now, it had been decided to record a small charity mini-episode, Time Crash, as part of Block Four; this was
taped on October 7th. The day after, work on Partners In Crime
resumed, with the Adipose Industries press conference filmed at the
Odeon Cinema in Cardiff.

Also recorded on the 8th, at Grange Well Park in Cardiff Bay, was the
scene in which Donna talks to her father while he's stargazing. This
marked Howard Attfield's first work on Doctor Who since The Runaway Bride, and sadly it was
immediately clear to the cast and crew that Attfield was not in good
health. When he invited Attfield back to the programme, Davies had been
informed that the actor had recently undergone chemotherapy to treat
cancer. At the time, however, Davies was unaware that Attfield's cancer
was not in remission, and his chemotherapy sessions were still in
progress. Attfield himself was frank about his long-term prospects:
although it was intended that Geoff Noble would appear in The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison
Sky -- the next story in production -- and then in the final
three episodes of the season, Attfield acknowledged that there was no
certainty of his participation.

Due to Howard Attfield's poor health, Russell T Davies had
to consider writing Geoff Noble's death into the season

As a result, Davies amended the scripts for The
Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky to allude to Geoff
having been unwell, and began considering the possibility of writing the
character's death into the season arc, with Donna becoming a stronger
person after dealing with the loss of her father. It was also suggested
that Attfield might record all of his scenes for the rest of the season
within the next few days, despite the fact that Davies had not yet
written the scripts for the last three episodes.

The sequences on the roof of Adipose Industries were filmed on October
9th and 10th at the British Gas Building in Cardiff; stairwell material
was also taped on the latter day. The 11th and 12th saw a suite in the
Dominions Arcade in Cardiff double as Miss Foster's office. The
cubicles, meanwhile, were actually located on the premises of Picture
Finance in Newport. The company's staff played the extras in these
scenes, recorded on October 13th. Sequences in the corridors of Adipose
Industries were next to be completed on the 15th, at Cardiff's
Millennium Stadium.

Meanwhile, shortly after completing his work on Partners In
Crime, Attfield -- his body weakened by his cancer -- suffered a
broken leg, and his wife suggested to the Doctor Who crew that
Attfield would not be able to return to the series. Out of respect for
Attfield, Davies immediately ruled out recasting the role of Geoff.
Instead, he proposed reviving one of his initial ideas for Penny Carter,
in which a key figure in the putative companion's life would have been
her stargazing grandfather. Producer Phil Collinson suggested
that they approach Bernard Cribbins, who had had a cameo role in the
2007 Christmas special, Voyage Of The
Damned, as a newsvendor named Stan. On October 15th, Cribbins
agreed to join the cast of Doctor Who. Davies immediately amended
the script to replace Geoff with Cribbins' character, whom he decided to
rename Wilfrid Mott. Geoff Noble would now be acknowledged as having
passed away sometime between the events of The
Runaway Bride and Partners In Crime.

On October 15th, Bernard Cribbins agreed to join the cast
of Doctor Who

Work on October 16th began with the TARDIS interior scenes at Upper Boat
Studios. Also recorded on this day was the material outside the wine bar
visited by Sylvia and her friends, which was actually Bar Icon in
Cardiff. On the 17th, a residence on Nant Fawr Road in Cardiff served as
Donna's home, while Donna convinced the Doctor to take her onboard the
TARDIS at Crockherbtown Lane. Work at the latter location also included
a remount of the stairwell sequence, caused by a lighting problem with
the original version. Cast and crew returned to Crockherbtown Lane on
the 18th for various exterior scenes; more of these were taped on the
premises of the British Gas Building. The same day, footage of the
Adipose Industries foyer was captured on Kings Way in Cardiff.

October 19th and 20th were spent at Upper Boat dealing with various
pick-up, insert and effects shots. The last day of principal photography
was the 23rd, when the Fat Cats Restaurant in Cardiff posed as the
interior of the wine bar, and the material in the Adipose Industries
washroom was completed at nearby Tiger Tiger. On November 19th, two
sequences were remounted: a scene in Stacey's house at Waterloo Gardens,
and Donna boarding the TARDIS near Scott Road in Cardiff.

The next day, material at the Noble residence was rerecorded at Nant
Fawr Road. This originally featured only Donna and Sylvia, but Wilf now
appeared as well. The team then shot a new version of the hilltop scene
with Wilf in place of Geoff; the location this time was Cardiff's
Grangemoor Park. On the 29th, the surprise scene involving Donna and
Rose was recorded during the making of Turn
Left at Franklen Road in Cardiff. As planned, this would be
excised from all preview prints of the episode, to be restored only for
its broadcast debut. Finally, on December 18th, a pick-up shot of Donna
arriving in the Adipose Industries foyer was taped at Upper Boat.

Sadly, Howard Attfield finally succumbed to his cancer on October 31st.
In tribute, it was decided that Partners In Crime would be
dedicated to his memory, and this was reflected in the closing credits.
For a time, it was thought that the new season would begin on April
12th, 2008, but in mid-March, it was decided to bring the date forward a
week, to April 5th. For the first few episodes, however, Doctor
Who would air around 6.20pm -- much earlier than had typically been
the case since the show's return in 2005. This timeslot was not to
Davies' liking, but despite fears of how the programme's ratings would
be impacted, Partners In Crime garnered an audience of 9.1
million. Surprisingly, this was better than any premiere since Rose propelled Doctor Who back into
the national consciousness in 2005, and was a sign of things to come in
the ensuing weeks...